Tuesday, February 10, 2009

I heard a radio advertisement for Splenda today, which featured a woman getting her useless husband to promise to cook for Valentine's, and when he burnt the chicken getting what she really wanted all the time by getting to go out for a meal. "Women know how to get what they really want," apparently (manipulate, like you've never manipulated before!). And Splenda is something that women want cos it's sweet but it's not sugar.

Har-har-di-har-har. [/sarcastic laugh]

This advert peeved me on a number of levels: it casts the man as a pathetic idiot who can't cook and doesn't know what his wife likes. Plus, it has a woman pretending she wants one thing when she really wants another. Not only that but she deliberately engineers an opportunity for her husband to fail, potentially feel humiliated and certainly guilty. What a wonderful relationship.

How much simpler it would be just to say you want to go out for a meal. If he's asking, why on earth wouldn't you say what you'd really like? If you can't afford it, then you still can't afford it after one burnt chicken. FFS. I know it's petty and it's supposed to be funny, but it really isn't.

It puzzles me too, as it's an advert aimed at women as far as I can tell, since Splenda is apparently what we want. Bah!